Microsoft CEO Nadella Explains Benefits of Advanced Cyber Capability

Advanced cyber capabilities helped identify the Russian activities on the Ukranian infrastructure long before the attack happened, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. Speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, he also said that these signals helped the Ukrainian government in a significant way.

“So what happened, for example in the Ukrainian case, we were able to, because of our cyber capability, because of the trillions of signals we see long before, quite frankly, the attack started, the Russian activity on critical Ukrainian infrastructure,” the Microsoft CEO said.

“And we were able to work then with the Ukrainian government to really evacuate them effectively into our cloud and protect them,” he added.

“… because our stance is that we will always be there for any partner of ours in their defence. And so we’re going to use both our security products, as well as our security signal, to ensure that we protect any organisation that is under attack and publish all of that information so that it can be broadly shared,” he added.

Nadella said cyber is a place where multiple stakeholders can come together to improve the cyber readiness of all of our organisations.

“I think it is going to be very, very important. This is between governments and private organisations and between private organisations across the globe,” he said.

Asked about key conclusions of the Ukraine analysis, Nadella said, “The key conclusions were that you have multiple cyber actors, sponsored in this case by the state, going after critical infrastructure that can completely compromise the functioning of a government or the broader society.” Also, the weakest link can be exploited to then hit hard at everything else and that’s an issue with the connected world, he warned.

“There is no such thing as an isolated system. So, one weak link. That’s why even in the United States, we care so much about every municipality, every state has to be protected, because otherwise you can start with an attack in one small place and it can easily spread,” he said.